Pages

Wednesday, January 13, 2010

ADDICTIONS

We all have them, in one form or another. I have a few. Purses, Kitchen gadgets, shoes, scarves, oh, and did I mention… food?
I know everyone shudders at the thought of being an alcoholic, or a drug user, or even being addicted to something as pleasurable as… say… sex… All of those things are taboo, horrifying, “not for me”, and should be dealt with in strict, rigid manner… they need to get “help”. What happens when those people “fall of the wagon?” They take a drink, they shoot up, or they find another willing partner for the moment…

What do all those things have in common? THEY CAN BE HIDDEN. The drunk can drink in private, and many people will have no idea. The drug user, sometimes, looks like just a Mom, a little frazzled, but that’s common right? And the sex addict? Well, most of the time, I would guess, would certainly be in private. What about a food addict? Can they hide?
Well, yeah… they can… but not for long. Sooner or later, the food addict’s problem becomes obviously apparent. The addict gets bigger, and bigger and bigger. No amount of eating in private can cover anything a food addict does. It’s written all over our bodies… stretch marks, fat, shame, guilt… what have you.

What’s different about being a food addict and being the other type of addict? Food is one of the basic necessities in life, like clothing and shelter… it’s in the holy trinity of basics.

It breaks my heart when I hear polls on the radio or read them in magazines, that women polled were asked “Which would you rather be… homeless or fat…” and the women overwhelmingly said “homeless”. Why does it hurt? It hurts because the “thin” people of the world see me as something beneath them, that homelssness would HAVE to be better than being me. That living on the street, standing in soup kitchen lines, pushing a grocery cart with all their worldly possesions ranks HIGHER than being me. That sleeping in shelters, and not having regular showers or basic shelter HAS to be better than being overweight.

In some sick and twisted way… I wish I felt the same way… then maybe I wouldn’t have allowed myself to morph into this body shape… Alcholics get called Drinkers, Lushes, Alchies and Drug users get called Junkies, Speed freaks, or Tweakers… say those names out loud… they sound almost like dog names… almost cute…

Not so with Fat people. WE get called OBESE… MORBIDLY OBESE. Can you imagine calling a cute little dog… “Tweakers… where are you Tweakers!!!” Now.. how about that same dog as…’Morbidly Obese… come here Morbidly Obese!!!” Doesn’t have the same ring does it?

Another addiction is being too thin. Having never experienced that before, I have read up and seen enough anorexia programs and seen the women that have it around, to know that they too, have a big problem… but thin is “in”, therefore, their problem is much more accepted and they get an awful lot of sympathy and almost “respect”.

What do food addicts get? “Here’s an exercise for you, PUSH yourself UP from the table once in a while!” or “Doesn’t he/she have a mirror… can’t they SEE?”

Yes, we see. WE see what you see. We see past it also.

I can only speak for myself… but when I look in the mirror, I do see a fat woman. I have for the past 13 years. I know… it’s a long time. Every pound hurts. Every pound represents some sort of failure, I suppose. That’s what people would like me to believe… wouldn’t they? In truth… when I look in the mirror, I see a slightly thinner person than all of you see. I don’t know why, maybe it’s that Body Dismorphic Syndrome… or something… but I see alot more than most people choose to see about myself.

Having been brought up in an Italian household, food was/is/always will be… love. We celebrate with food, we cry with food, we welcome people into our homes with food, we console others with food. If you ever leave an Italians household hungry, it’s your own dang fault… I didn’t just get food as love though. I got a deep sense of who I am as a person too. I got self esteem, loads of it! Pound for pound, I know for a fact, I have more self esteem than any skinny friend I have. I know how to walk into a room and own it. Always have. Just because I got fat, didn’t mean I had to change who I was! When I look into a mirror… THAT CONFIDENT woman is who I see. That’s a fact. It really pisses people off. They really want me to be self loathing. They really NEED me to be down on myself. They really don’t understand how I can LOOK like this… and smile every. single. day. Wanna know how I do this?

I LOVE MYSELF WHERE I AM AT. Plain and simple. An alcoholic can stop cold turkey and be done with alcohol in an instant… forever… if they want to be. A drug user can do the same thing. When they are done… they can be done… and no one will know about it unless they say something…

Not so with a food addict. A food addict has to wait. We have to wait for our bodies to catch up with our minds. We have to wait for the weight to come off, pound by pound, day by day. We have to wait for how elated we feel inside to have broken the bondage of food addiction, to be shown on the outside… sometime months… sometimes years…

It can be agonizing, it can be brutal. It often is. The rewards far outnumber all that agony. I’m far from thin, even now having lost 67 lbs… but I can see the light at the end of the proverbial tunnel. I know, for the first time in 13 years, I won’t be a fat peron my entire life. I don’t have to resign myself to that any longer. Something clicked. LDL works… like no other eating plan has.

Oprah had the star of “Precious” on her show a few months ago, and Oprah, a heavy woman, said to the lovely girl, “You just have so much self confidence, you just are right out there” or something to that nature… it irked me. WHY SHOULDN”T that young lady have self confidence? Why is it such a commodity? Why isn’t it okay to be comfortable in one’s own skin? Just because my skin happens to cover a larger body than other’s doesn’t mean that self loathing needs to be the norm!

Wanna know what else irks me? The fact that the W.H.O or C.D.C whichever it is… came out with what I call the OBESE-O-METER, and tried to cram down our throats that a woman who is 5.5″ and weighs 150 lbs is consider OBESE! Really? Ya wanna go there? Why contribute to women’s already low opinions of themselves? Can’t a woman have a couple of curves and be beautiful in this society? I’m not talking about my size, I’m talking about NORMAL sized women. Why can’t a 12 be beautiful? Why does only a 2 constitute beauty?

Addictions are horrible things. Even being addicted to exercise (which I have never been… duh!) can be detrimental to one’s health. OVERDOING anything is just problematic. Being overweight is no worse than being addicted to drugs or alcohol, or even sex, for that matter! Anything done to the extreme is bad. Too bad society see’s obesity as the worst one possible.

Don’t get me wrong… I have known for years I needed to lose all this weight. I’m not HAPPY about my size. It makes living more difficult. I’m not saying that being overweight is a good thing, and everyone should just get over it.. no… not my intention at all. I’m finally admitting that I had a problem, kinda like, “HI, my name is Sandra, and I’m fat.” The world already knew that, I can’t hide it, no matter how big and loose I buy my clothing. I’m on my way to being a healthy size, that I decide, not some stupid think tank decides.

I pray that all the skinny women {who think that the 3 lbs they need to lose will make them happy forever, lose it and them find something else wrong with themselves} read this . I pray they get even 1/2 the self confidence I have in myself. I pray they realize that we all come in different shapes and sizes, and we are all worthy of love, affection, and respect. I pray they begin to understand that self worth is more than a size of jeans or a number.

Addictions suck. Acknowledging the addiction is cathartic. Breaking the addiction is miraculous. Knowing I won’t go there again… is a gift.

Thanks for reading this far… Leave a comment if you like… I’d love to hear from you.